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Cymer’s light source spectra data used to improve KLA-Tencor tool |
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Feb 22, 2006 at 10:25 AM |
 Cymer will provide details of its lithography light source spectra to be incorporated into KLA-Tencor's PROLITH lithography optimisation tool. In addition, the companies expect to continue to jointly develop enhancements to this capability for future PROLITH revisions.
Through this collaboration, Cymer and KLA-Tencor plan to deliver increased accuracy, giving users immediate access to a more accurate representation of the complete optical lithography process. As a result, customers should be able to optimise their lithography processes much faster, thus reducing their time-to-production and maximising overall return on investment (ROI).
Edward Charrier, General Manager, Process Analysis Division, KLA-Tencor, comments: "The effect of laser bandwidth on critical dimensions (CD) becomes more significant with higher numerical apertures (NA) and shrinking process windows. As these effects become progressively greater, we see a growing need to provide a more accurate representation of the light source spectrum available to our customers."
The PROLITH advanced lithography process optimisation tool provides users with insight into the effects of lithography process variables while evaluating process performance improvements. With the new enhancements, customers using PROLITH will be able to model the effects of changes in light source spectral characteristics on their advanced lithography processes, and use these results to better optimise their process to minimise the effects of the variations.
Nigel Farrar, Cymer's vice president Lithography Applications Marketing, reports that his company has been collaborating with KLA-Tencor on simulating the impact of laser bandwidth on CD for more than five years.
The latest update of PROLITH, version 9.3.1, is available to users now.
By Dr Mike Cooke
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